


Mirror Image

by klaviergavout



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Gen, featuring a lot of pierre's usual depressing thoughts and a lot of helene's usual incest, this is my first fic for these characters so i hope they aren't too out of character or anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 20:37:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10838988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klaviergavout/pseuds/klaviergavout
Summary: Pierre comes home from a long night of drinking his problems away, and realises that he and his wife may be much more similar than he thought.





	Mirror Image

It has barely gone midnight when Pierre Bezukhov exits his regular drinking spot and lazily dumps himself into the back of a waiting troika. As usual, he'd been in the midst of a bar fight he could hardly remember now, easily floored and easily injured. He touches the sensitive skin round his left eye and winces. Whoever delivered the punches had probably said something about Napoleon, the war, or his wife's unfaithfulness.  
Perhaps they had said all three.

Russia seems warm to him now as he steps out of the vehicle, tipping the driver a good few rubles too many before he stumbles back into his home and slams the doors behind him. He's not angry, no, definitely not angry, but the low and flickering fires of disappointment are beginning to rise. He's back at home now, and it's the last place he wants to be, especially in _this_ state. Especially with Hélène there.

Hélène, oh, Hélène, how he _hates_ her. How he _wishes_ he could take all of her happiness and crush it in his palms, see her face twist with sadness, watch her drink and read her days away until nothing is left. Until she's left as his own mirror image, pathetic and miserable and utterly useless, yes, useless to Moscow and the rest of the world. And yet something in his conscience tells him he can't. Perhaps, he thinks with a wry smile on his face, perhaps hat's why he drinks so much. To forget he even has a conscience in the first place.

Pierre drags himself up the staircase and thinks of Hélène.

She's there when he opens the door to their still shared room, curled up like a child on the bed, her expression dull and lifeless. For a moment he almost swears he's sober.

"Wife," he says, because her name leaves a bitter taste in his mouth, rolls unpleasantly off the tongue, "why do you look so miserable?"

Hélènerefuses to answer, as usual, and shifts so that she's facing away from him. Pierre stands still and silent, looking upon her from the doorway.  
  
Several minutes pass, then finally, she speaks.  
  
"Come to bed then." It's cold and unhappy. He does as he's told, but in his heart he sees himself back in that bar fight, forgetting all this through the punches and blows, his estate and his wife and the unkind world that ruined him.

Pierre blows out the lamps and tries to sleep. He's tired, yes, drowsy from the alcohol he'd pumped into his system that night, but her presence keeps him awake. Her presence makes his stomach churn further, makes his eyes imprison him in a stranger's room, force him to watch the obscenities rumoured by everyone he knows.

Then she speaks again. It's quiet and more vulnerable, he notes, but it's still the apathetic tone he knows so well.  
  
"My brother is home."

Pierre decides just to listen. _Ah,_ he thinks, _so this is about Anatole._ At once he sees them in his mind, kissing frantically in the corner of some club, holding steadfast to each other as if on the brink of death, and he sinks more and more into the covers.

"He's only stopped here once. _'Lend me some rubles, dear sister,_ " she imitates, putting on his higher tone venomously, " _'and I shall pay the gypsies a visit.'_   Drunk, of course. And I gave it to him, Pierre, I gave him the money-- for what else could I have done? I told him to come back tonight. It's already been five hours."

Pierre wants more than anything to remind her that she had often asked him for money to go on trips to neighbouring towns, only for him to find out that she had used it as an excuse to slip off to pay a visit to her latest toy. He doesn't, though. He listens.

"I'm his _sister._ I have cared for him for years and _this_ is what I deserve? I have risked time and money for him and _this_ is how he repays me? We are bound by blood! He should be visiting _me_ , he should be giving me the look he gives to foolish girls, not off at some whorehouse when I am here and I am _free._ "

"Perhaps he is tired of you." Pierre says something before he can stop himself. "You became tired of me."

"He is not tired of me, I could not bear it if he was," she replies, her voice cracking unpleasantly in the middle, and Pierre is left confused.

"But you are always looking for somebody else. Why should he matter?"

"Just because I court somebody does not mean that I love them," Helene snaps back, tears obscured by the darkness, "and you of all people should know."

Pierre learns something from his wife that night. His drinking, her want of new lovers, both are distractions to the emptiness they feel inside of themselves- distractions from the things they need most. Perhaps, thinks Pierre that night, they share a lot more in common than he had cared to realise.Perhaps, thinks Pierre that night, he cannot crush her happiness, because her happiness had been crushed long ago.

He tries to sleep, but she's crying now, muffled sobs escaping from behind her thin pillow. On a worse day, he thinks, he might have been angry. He might have yelled at her, insulted her, maybe even done something he would definitely regret the next morning.

Now, he sighs as he pulls himself out of bed, opens the bedroom door, and walks straight through without bothering to find a light.

 


End file.
